You can use read as merlyn points out, but you can also do it by setting the input record separator to a scalar reference.

{
  local $/ = \512;

  while (<FILE>) {
    # process the 512 bytes you have in $_
  }
}

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<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

In reply to Re: How do I slurp an arbitrary number of bytes from a file? by davorg
in thread How do I slurp an arbitrary number of bytes from a file? by donfreenut

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